KingVoid wrote:
Alonso’s 2010 season was very error prone. He made more mistakes than both Hamilton and Vettel that season. Vettel lost a net 79 points relative to Alonso because of reliability that year, otherwise he would have dominated 2010 as easily as 2011. Hamilton drove the third best car on the grid in 2010 and was overall arguably the best performing driver that season.
If Alonso can make five mistakes (Australia, China, Monaco, Silverstone, Spa) over the course of a season in his prime, then who is to say he wouldn’t be making mistakes in the 2018 Ferrari? What Vettel did in Germany was very similar to what Alonso did in Spa 2010.
Was 2012 not his prime? I'm not convinced he's even out of it yet but that's another discussion.
All drivers make mistakes so you have to look at the context of the mistakes. In 2010 Alonso was in his first year at a team, first good car for 2 seasons and was in a battle with a car half a second faster (Red Bull) and a car roughly similar driven by his biggest rival (Lewis/Macca). He overdrove several times that year trying to do far too much because of the speed deficit and it cost him, I agree Lewis was better that year but I thought it was pretty similar with Seb and Alonso for one reason or another but yeah an unusual amount of mistakes from Alonso.
2012 he still had nearly a half second deficit to Red Bull and now Lewis too in the Macca is up there for large parts of the season and he had Kimi in a similar Lotus but look at the difference. One arguable mistake all year (Suzuka).
Same driver and only one season in between but the context changed and he knew better how to approach that speed deficit situation because his own situation had changed since too.
If he has the fastest car to fall back on and is comfortable within the team then he's in a 2006 situation but much more experienced and in his prime so it's just external pressure and reliability left to cause you issues and if you can withstand Michael and Ferrari without making lots of mistakes I'm not sure why he'd suddenly falter in this one and make as many mistakes in a fastest car scenario like 2018 as 2010 when he has to chase much faster cars in his first good car for a couple of years.
In Seb's scenario he's had a trial run almost with last year and now with the same level of comfort within the team and now with a quicker and for the most part quickest outright car he's making more mistakes. The only thing context wise I can think off as to why he'd be making more mistakes is that he might feel this is his best chance to do it for Ferrari and it's his first real good chance since 2013 to win the title so that could lead to a bit more nervousness naturally.
I think if you just picked Alonso up and dumped him in this years Ferrari then yeah he could make the same kind of mistakes as Seb. First top car in 11 years that he can top the majority of sessions in and no-one's gone this long between titles so there's bound to be nervousness,giddyness and hiccups galore to catch him out.
Give him last year as well though to warm up and get settled back in a top car then no, I agree with Ernie, I don't think he'd be making these mistakes in this years Ferrari at all and would be leading the title chase assuming reliability is the same obviously.
Everyone makes one or two though so over the year he'd have a couple I'm sure and if Seb 2013's the back half no-one will care about the points dropped in the first half, much like 2010 and 2012.